


the clearest way through the universe

by keptein



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 04:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4947157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keptein/pseuds/keptein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(is through a forest's wilderness.)</p>
<p> Koutarou doesn't know anything, Tetsurou knows too much, and Keiji hides.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the clearest way through the universe

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to shannon, aj, bishop and jihye for various opinions. this has stayed finished but unposted in my gdrive for way too long. it was time to set it free.

i.

There is a longing in Koutarou’s chest.

It is as certain as the bark under his fingertips, as familiar as the sunshine through thick leaves overhead. It’s as constant as his breath, a slow fire keeping him warm. He does not mind the longing anymore. Koutarou has contented himself with what is, and his thoughts don’t stray to what could be.

(In his dreams, they spill out of his hands between his fingers, sweet like honey and sharp like sap against his tongue. They take the shape of people he doesn’t know, feelings he can’t put words to - but that is restricted to dreams quickly forgotten. When awake, Koutarou is with the longing and the forest and the rain, and no one taught him not to be satisfied with this.)

The owl tells him someone is nearing as Koutarou roasts his dinner over the fire, humming a broken tune his mother used to sing. It pecks at the ground insistently, demanding attention, and when Koutarou looks over it flies away, big black wings disappearing among the trees.

Koutarou thanks it. His mother taught him well.

There is a sound, sticks breaking under heavy feet, and then a man emerges from behind Koutarou’s cabin, the opposite direction of where the owl flew.

At first, Koutarou thinks it is the man he has been dreaming of, but it’s not - this man is taller and his hair is longer, although it is just as dark. He carries himself like a stranger, gaze slowly shifting between the open fire and Koutarou. He looks like he has suffered loss, but it has only fueled his determination. “Hello,” he says, voice deep and pleasant.

“Hello,” Koutarou replies, quick and loud, trying to hide his excitement at the prospect of conversation. He gestures to the roast. “Are you hungry?”

The man looks around, eyebrows knitting behind his unruly fringe, but he takes a seat on the log opposite Koutarou. “Yes, if it’s no trouble.”

“Not at all,” Koutarou says easily. He likes feeding wanderers, although he can’t remember ever having done it before - but the concept is thrilling. He fills a bowl with broth and meat and gives it to the man. “Are you lost?”

“No,” the man says, accepting the bowl. He gives it a dubious glance, bringing the spoon warily to his lips, but then he starts eating in earnest, pausing only to breathe and speak. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“A magician,” the man says. “A young, foolish magician.”

“I haven’t seen anyone like that,” Koutarou says. “Sorry.”

The man gives him a small smile. “I’ll find him. But thank you.”

Koutarou nods, eating from his own bowl. “Where are you from?” he asks. He can’t stop looking at him, the yellow of the flames getting caught in his hair and making his eyes glint.

“The village,” the man says. “You know it.”

Koutarou shakes his head. “I don’t.” The man pauses, a conflicted expression passing like a shadow over his face, before he nods.

“There is a village nearby,” he explains. “You should come visit sometime.”

Koutarou looks around, checking for great black wings, then lowers his voice. “I don’t want to leave.”

“You can’t stay here forever.” The man frowns. “How long have you been here?”

Koutarou shrugs, hiding behind his bowl of broth. “I don’t know,” he says. “This - here - it needs me.”

The man pauses, then smiles, looking cold despite the warm colours dancing across his face. “Not so heartless,” he says, but he doesn’t explain himself. “My name’s Tetsurou.”

“I’m Koutarou.”

“I know,” the man says, which doesn’t surprise him. It feels like this man - Tetsurou - knows everything, and Koutarou is curious. Not about himself, because the great chasm between him and the rest of the world is not something he cares to bridge, but about Tetsurou.

“Tell me about your village,” Koutarou says. “Do you like it?”

“I do, although it’s quiet these days. My friends are away.”

“Oh, you’re lonely!” Koutarou exclaims. “That’s why you’re looking for the magician.”

Tetsurou stops and puts his empty bowl down. “Maybe,” he says quietly. “Are you lonely?”

Koutarou shakes his head vigorously. “But the forest is,” he says. “That’s why I have to be here, you know?”

Tetsurou’s laughter sounds familiar, quiet like wind rustling in the leaves - half a second later Koutarou realises it’s not just the wind, and he knows what is coming. “Yeah,” Tetsurou says. “I know.” He stands up and hands Koutarou the bowl. “Thank you for the food.”

“Anytime,” Koutarou replies quickly, keeping an eye out for the owl. He can’t quite hear it yet, but it is close. “You should go. Good luck finding your magician.”

Tetsurou nods and raises a hand in farewell, walking off.

Koutarou looks up. On the branch above him, two amber orbs are shining in the dark, watchful.

.i

At night, he dreams. _A magician_ , Tetsurou says, over and over. The man is there - the other man, the man Koutarou mistook Tetsurou for. He seems short now, hunched over and small. Koutarou wants to help him.

They hold hands. Tetsurou isn't there, although Koutarou feels like he is watching, and sometimes he thinks he catches a glimpse of him before the man waves a hand and he is compelled to look away.

The man kisses him on the cheek. He murmurs something, but it turns to static, low and rhythmic.

Koutarou wakes.

ii.

The next day, he chops firewood and tends to the plants. He walks from the river to the cabin, great jug of water in his hands, and waters them carefully, one by one. The owl lands on the tree stump next to him and hoots with disapproval.

"I'm not going to water them too much," Koutarou says. "I'm being careful, see?" He gestures with the jug, but doesn't drop it. The owl's eyes are mistrusting, the line of its brow set in a permanent frown.

"Don't look at me like that," he tells it. "I'm trying to be helpful."

The owl hoots.

"Helpful," Koutarou says again, carefully enunciating it. Sometimes words jumble in his throat, syllables and sounds contorting into a great mess he has to cough out, but not this time. The word comes easily.

The owl is quiet, and when Koutarou turns back from the plants a few minutes later, it is gone.

Koutarou tucks his supplies away, bundling the firewood up in rough-hewn bags. Someone knocks on the outer wall of the cabin to announce his presence before he steps out from the shadows. "Hello again," Tetsurou says.

"Hi," Koutarou says, giving him a grin. "How is the search?"

Tetsurou looks around him. "Not very fruitful," he admits. "I think I'm on the right track, though."

"That's good," Koutarou says. "I have food, are you hungry?" It's earlier than Tetsurou's last visit, not quite dinner-time, but Koutarou is always hungry, more so these days - a gnawing thing that rests in the bottom of his stomach, eager and starved for attention.

"I brought food, actually," Tetsurou says, and takes out a satchel Koutarou didn't notice before. From it, he brings out pouches of berries and dried meat, pouring them into Koutarou's outstretched hands.

"Oh, wow, thank you!”

"I owed you," Tetsurou says, giving him a small smile. He touches Koutarou's cupped hands, but lets them go before Koutarou can remark on it.

The berries and the meat soothe the hunger, but only the way a trickle of water appeases a drought.

"I was wondering if you would help me," Tetsurou says once they've eaten.

Koutarou cocks his head like the owl does when it listens to him sing, and Tetsurou looks startled at the movement, head turning upward to search the trees. "With what?" Koutarou asks, so Tetsurou will look at him again.

"With the search," Tetsurou says. "If you're not busy."

"I have obligations," Koutarou starts, but he can't find the words to name them. Tetsurou waits for him to finish, but Koutarou just gestures to the beaten ground before the cabin, the forest in its looming entirety.

"I see," Tetsurou says slowly. "Maybe you could -"

Loud screeching interrupts him, and then the owl is there, landing next to Koutarou. Its feathers are raised, bigger than Koutarou has ever seen it, and it looks right at Tetsurou as it hoots, wings drawing great spirals in the air.

"You should leave," Koutarou tells him over the sound. Tetsurou does, after a careful glance behind him. The owl flies after him, wing clipping the back of his head.

Eventually it comes back, pecking at the ground next to Koutarou. He pets it with a careful finger.

"Don't be so mean," he says.

The owl doesn't respond.

.ii

He dreams again. It feels like that's all he does, these days - hazy dreams of bodies, of people he knows he doesn't know, of people he doesn't know at all. The longing, that godforsaken longing won't leave him. Instead it fills his chest to the brim and rises up to his brain like a bad taste in the back of his mouth - longing, longing, that's all he can feel, longing that feels foreign and undeserved, but longing all the same. He can see himself, laughing, feet kicking at the air as he sits on a bridge, gleefully watching rocks fall into the river below. He looks up at himself, smiling, growing, and then there's Tetsurou - grinning, holding onto his arm, but not _his_ arm, now it feels like someone else's.

He watches Tetsurou kiss him, this man that looks like him, that might be him.

He can't see the man he usually dreams of, but when he looks down, his hands are smaller, fingers longer and thinner than his.

Koutarou wakes up.

iii.

"Alright, come on!" Someone is yelling when Koutarou returns from the river, dirty shirt slung over his shoulders in a makeshift towel. His hair is still dripping, water running down his back, and he scrubs the shirt over it, eyes wide as he takes in the scene - Tetsurou standing in front of his cabin, kicking at the sitting log and yelling. "Keiji! Come out!"

"What's happening?" Koutarou asks as he approaches. Tetsurou stops to look at him, his usual jovial expression turned into something hard and embittered.

"I'm waiting for Keiji to come out," he says.

"Who?" Koutarou asks, and Tetsurou laughs sharply.

"Yeah, _hoo_ \- that's the magic word. Keiji!"

He yells it again, and finally the owl appears. Koutarou thinks it will chase Tetsurou away, like it has before, but instead it flies to land on Koutarou's shoulder, claws just shy of breaking skin.

"Don't hide behind him," Tetsurou threatens. "Come out."

The owl leaves red marks on Koutarou's shoulder when it flies off and lands on the ground between them. Slowly, it changes shape, grows into something Koutarou recognizes - a man still on the cusp of boyhood, with round cheeks and bruised eyes, clad in dark, drab clothing. Exhaustion weighs him down. When Koutarou takes a step forward to steady him, Tetsurou barks a quick, "Don't."

Koutarou stays back, frowning.

"You can't keep this up," Tetsurou tells the man - Keiji. The magician, Koutarou realizes, although the knowledge feels familiar already. "You're driving yourself to the bone for nothing. Your mother misses you."

Keiji's voice is scratchy and hoarse, so low that Koutarou has to focus to pick it up. "My mother doesn't care," he says.

Tetsurou sighs. "She does," he says. "And Kou's mother misses him. It’s been almost two weeks."

Keiji flinches at that, dark eyes raising to meet Tetsurou's. "That's a low blow," he says.

"Get back to me when any of this makes you worthy of my respect," Tetsurou says sharply.

"Okay, okay," Koutarou says, ready to diffuse a situation he doesn’t quite understand. “What’s going on? Two weeks?”

Tetsurou gestures to Keiji. “Tell him,” he says.

Keiji grimaces, and his words, when they come, are reluctant. “I know you, Koutarou,” he says. “I…” He trails off, mouth opening and closing, looking at once lost for words and immensely uncomfortable with the prospect.

“Feels like everyone does but me,” Koutarou says. “What is it?”

Instead of replying, Keiji goes into the cabin, and when he comes out, he is carrying an intricately engraved wooden box.

Koutarou has seen it before, but he has never touched it. It has been lying on the windowsill, and he has always thought of it gathering sunlight, like a plant or something else that breathes.

“This is your heart,” Keiji says. He looks uncomfortable. “I took it, almost -” the word is punctuated by a sharp look in Tetsurou’s direction, “ - two weeks ago.”

“You what?” Koutarou asks, while Tetsurou laughs, one sharp bark of laughter.

Keiji turns to Tetsurou abruptly. “I just wanted what you have,” he tells him through gritted teeth. “Have the decency not to laugh in my face.”

“Then you shouldn’t have pulled this immature, dangerous prank,” Tetsurou says. “I lost you both, and for what? You two to play house in the woods when he doesn’t even remember who you are?”

Keiji looks stunned, and Koutarou sees his chance to interrupt. “Can I get it back?” He gestures to the box in Keiji’s hands, then to himself.

Keiji gives an almost imperceptible nod. He opens the box carefully and takes the heart out.

It is as big as a pear, shining a bright, luxurious vermillion in the sunlight. It beats sluggishly, and Koutarou’s chest aches when he sees it, a deeper sense of belonging than he’s ever felt before ringing through him.

Keiji steps forward, heart in hand, and presses it into his sternum. The touch of it hurts, sharp and painful like forceful relief, the ache in his stomach fading as it sinks in, the red disappearing until Keiji’s hand is flush against his skin. He goes to pull away, and Koutarou wraps a hand around his wrist, keeping him there.

It feels like waking up, or hearing an old story from a friend - something you can’t remember until you know it. Koutarou looks at Keiji and sees the village boy he used to play with, the youth who would sometimes agree to entertain him by summoning sparks of flame or shivers of ice, the man he resolved to admire from a distance as they grew apart.

He feels the weight of longing in his chest, now gone, replaced by something warmer, something that beats.

“Tetsu,” he says, lifting his eyes to him, and Tetsurou breathes out a shaky exhale, smile wobbly.

“Hey,” he says.

“Thanks for visiting,” Koutarou says, giving him a smile. He’s still holding Keiji’s wrist, and Keiji isn’t pulling away. His face is in shadows, head bent in shame.

“You were a better host than usual,” Tetsurou says, but his joke falls flat as his gaze moves to the back of Keiji’s head and stays there.

Koutarou follows his gaze. “He’s just lonely,” he says, and at that, Keiji reacts - his hand jerks to pull away, but Koutarou keeps his grip on his wrist.

“Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here,” he says, voice close to breaking, and Koutarou pulls him into a hug, wrapping his arms around him. His shirt falls off his shoulders, but none of that matters when Keiji’s arms come up to wrap around his back, clutching at him, face hidden.

Over Keiji’s shoulder, Koutarou catches Tetsurou’s gaze. He widens his eyes and looks down, signaling for him to step closer. After a slight pause, he does, coming close enough to hug them both, head balanced on Koutarou’s shoulder.

“Fucking hell, Keiji,” Koutarou says, and grips them both tighter in case they try to run away. “What a mess you’ve made.”

“I know,” comes Keiji’s reply, quiet. “I’m sorry. Koutarou, I’m so sorry.”

“Stupid,” Koutarou says lightly, and presses a small, spontaneous kiss behind his ear, one of the few parts of him he can reach. He feels like he should be mad, but instead he feels light, so full of relief that everything is back to place that there’s no space left for anger. For two weeks, he wasn’t himself, but coming back makes _sense_ , everything makes sense now - even Keiji’s motivations, aching and lonely to the core, make sense. “Tetsu…”

“I know, I know,” Tetsurou sighs. Koutarou hasn’t mentioned it explicitly, the things he would dream of sometimes - the three of them, tangled together - but he’s not surprised that Tetsurou knows. Koutarou knows more now, but it still feels like Tetsurou knows everything.

“You said you missed us,” Koutarou tries.

Tetsurou pulls away a little. “I did.”

Keiji is quiet.

“So…” Koutarou prompts. The forest is quiet around them, like every living thing is also waiting with bated breath, impatient for Tetsurou’s answer.

“It’s not been the same without you,” Tetsurou says finally, arms squeezing around both Koutarou and Keiji. “So I guess, yeah. We could give it a go.”

Keiji goes rigid. Koutarou knows he’s not stupid enough to miss what they’re discussing, even if the nuances of it might be lost.

Koutarou nudges him. “What do you think?”

Keiji pulls back to look at him, meeting his gaze before he turns to Tetsurou. They look at each other for a long time without speaking, Keiji’s eyebrows twitching together. Slowly, Tetsurou pulls a hand up and runs his thumb under Keiji’s eye, as if trying to soothe away the hollows. “I’m sorry,” Keiji says to him.

“I’m sorry, too,” Tetsurou replies, just as sincere.

Koutarou bites his tongue to refrain from interrupting, but when Keiji turns back to him and nods, he can’t help the grin that spreads over his face.

Keiji smiles back, tentatively - Tetsurou lets out a frustrated groan and pulls them both back in, rubbing his arm over Keiji’s back.

“Don’t look so lost,” he says. “I don’t like it.”

“I’m -”

“Stop apologizing, too,” he says firmly. “It’s unlike you.”

Keiji falls silent, and Koutarou nudges at Tetsurou’s face. “Hey,” he says, and kisses him, long and slow. When they separate, Tetsurou is smiling faintly.

“Hey,” he says.

“I’ll go see if there’s anything we should bring from inside,” Koutarou says. He untangles himself from the two, gathers Keiji’s face in his hands and presses a quick kiss to his lips - Keiji startles, but doesn’t move away until Koutarou disappears inside the cabin, humming.

He comes back out with a bag of clothes and some trinkets he carved from firewood. Tetsurou and Keiji are standing next to each other, their hands joined between them.

“Alright,” Koutarou says and gives them a big grin, even though Keiji still looks sick and Tetsurou looks tired, face drawn - there’s more there, a sense of wonder that Koutarou itches to breathe into life. “Let’s go home.”

.iii

(“Why did you never show yourself?” Koutarou asks Keiji, under a clear night sky, stars twinkling in every direction.

“I was ashamed.”

“I dreamt of you,” he says, and Keiji startles, looking over at him. “In the forest.”

“Not just in the forest,” Tetsurou chimes in sleepily, curled up against Koutarou’s side.

“Not just in the forest,” Koutarou agrees. “But mostly in the forest. I dreamt of both of you.”

The stars are bright enough to illuminate Keiji’s smile, though it’s small. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Koutarou says. He tangles their fingers together and lifts their hands together - Tetsurou’s head shifts on his shoulder to watch them too, the three of them enraptured by the sight. “It’s okay.”

“A learning experience,” Tetsurou murmurs, tone almost free of bitterness, and Keiji huffs out a laugh, reaching with his and Koutarou’s entwined hands to find Tetsurou’s, tangling them all together.

Koutarou looks at the stars. They look cold and bright in the distance, but he is warm wherever he is touched, and in his chest is a heart, full and steady and true.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](http://twitter.com/tivruskis) | [tumblr](http://tivruskis.tumblr.com) | yo, come talk to me.


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